The first display areas of the New Uffizi

The blue rooms dedicated to foreign artists

After extensive work carried out concealed from the gaze of the public, at the Uffizi we are now beginning
to see – or rather to experience – the new rooms of the gallery.

These rooms of domestic dimensions –'gabinetti', or studies, where it was the custom to display works of small
format – have been hung with works by foreign sixteenth and seventeenth-century artists: Spanish, French, Flemish and Dutch.
Since these areas occupy a portion of the museum not comprised within Vasari’s building, it has not been necessary to conform
to the Vasarian colour scheme – almost excessively observed up to now – made up of the grey of the sandstone and the white of
the walls. This colour scheme was followed by Gardella, Michelucci and Scarpa when they designed the six rooms that became a
benchmark in the museology textbooks of the twentieth century (from the room of the three Maestà to that of the Pollaiolo), and
which was faithfully reproposed in the two rooms inspired by them (the Lippi room and that of Leonardo). It is, nevertheless, a
colour scheme that, continuing throughout the visit itinerary, ends up leaving a general impression of whiteness that has more the
flavour of an infirmary than the dignity of abstraction. This is why I asked that a more vibrant, or frankly bright, colour be taken
into consideration for the rooms devoted to the foreign painters; in this specific case the choice fell on blue, which in terms of
culture and taste appeared to be best suited to the works for which these rooms have been conceived. The reception of this idea by
the colleagues responsible for the “New Uffizi” project was immediate: an ulterior sign of a consensus that is increasingly consolidated
and generates positive input for a fruitful continuation of the works.

Nonetheless, for the future we have to continue to ask ourselves – obviously not only as far as the Uffizi is concerned – whether a
reflection is not called for on the aversion to colour which has afflicted us all for so many years. We need to discern its historic
origins, even if only to account for the current colour of Florence, which logically derives from the (largely obligatory) colour of
its facades: a lacklustre range of exclusively pale shades.